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Don Hewitt passes away

— From NBC's Matthew SamuelsDon Hewitt, one of the pioneers of television news and the creator of CBS's "60 Minutes" died today of pancreatic cancer. He was 86 years old.

More from the "60 Minutes" Web site: "Hewitt's remarkable career in journalism spanned over 60 years, virtually all of it at CBS. As a young producer/director assisting at the birth of television news, it was usually Hewitt behind the scenes directing legendary CBS News reporters like Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, using a playbook he had to write himself. He played an integral role in all of CBS News' coverage of major news events from the late 1940s through the 1960s, putting him in the middle of some of history's biggest events, including one of politics' seminal moments: the first televised presidential debate in 1960."

More: "As Hewitt's ['60 Minutes'] correspondents exposed crooks, drilled to the core of a celebrity or interrogated world leaders and newsmakers, 60 Minutes became an unprecedented success, drawing legions of faithful followers who planned their Sundays around the program. Even when CBS lost its NFL contract in 1994, putting its former lead-in audience on another network to compete against it, 60 Minutes was still a huge hit, finishing number six for the 1994-95 season. Hewitt always had stock answers to questions about what 60 Minutes' secret was. He often told journalists, 'It's four words every child knows: Tell me a story.'"